Explorations in Materials Science (discontinued)

About twenty years ago Arthur Ellis, Wisconsin chemistry professor, visited our senior chemistry class at Wabash College. He was a friend either of Richard Dallinger, one of our chemistry professors at Wabash and one of my advisors, or of David Phillips, another chemistry professor and husband of Pru Phillips under whom I did my student teaching.

Dr Ellis presented information about light-emitting diodes, teaching us about p-gaps, n-gaps, and lots of other stuff that I don't really understand anymore but that I need to learn again now that it's in the recently-revised AP chemistry curriculum.

At the time, though, Dr Ellis took some time to speak to me, the lone chemistry teacher in training in the senior class at Wabash. He was particularly excited about the Institute for Chemical Education (ICE) at the University of Wisconsin. They had at that point recently published Teaching General Chemistry: a materials science companion (see the yellow book down and to the right), and Ellis (or maybe Pru, I can't remember) gave me a copy of the book. I filed it away somewhere, kept it in my supplies, and forgot that it existed for ten or fifteen years. Then one of the master teachers in the ASM program mentioned the book, and I bought a copy - with no memory of already having a copy somewhere in my supplies already.

Recently I went looking at ICE's website seeing what was still around there for purchase and use. One item in particular caught my attention, something called the Explorations in Material Science kit (the image up top is of that kit). It looks to be a trio of silicon molds allowing for the creation of nine roughly identical samples for, I assume, subsequent testing. The kit seems to also include a pound of tin shot (at least that's what's available as replacement supplies from their catalog.


The idea of materials samples in identical shapes, sizes, thicknesses, but widely varying compositions (different metals, various polymers, ceramics, glasses, composites) for testing is something I would love to have for my material science classes.

Does anybody out there have one of these Explorations in Material Science kits out there? Is it worth hunting?